US hopes Bhopal gas tragedy verdict brings 'closure'

WASHINGTON: The United States voiced hope Monday that the court verdict would bring closure over the Bhopal gas tragedy and rejected taking action of its own against the company.

A court in the central Indian city sentenced seven former top managers of the Union Carbide pesticide plant to two years in prison in the first convictions over the 1984 leak that killed thousands of people.

"Obviously this was one of the greatest industrial tragedies and industrial accidents in human history," Robert Blake, the US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, told reporters.

"We hope that this verdict today helps to bring some closure to the victims and their families," he said.

"But I don't expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that. On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure," he said.

Blake was responding to a question on whether the United States would pursue Union Carbide with the same vigor as it is targeting BP over a major oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Warren Anderson, the American then-chairman of the Union Carbide parent group, was among the accused but was not named in the verdicts after the Bhopal court declared him an "absconder."

The aging former executive, who is loathed by many environmentalists, lives in suburban New York.

A coalition of survivors of the Bhopal disaster accused Anderson of allowing untested technology and "reckless cost-cutting."

"Justice cannot be done in Bhopal till these principal accused are brought to trial," Rashida Bee, who lost six family members, said in the statement by the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.

The statement called the verdict a "travesty of justice."

"We feel outraged and betrayed," campaigner Hazra Bee said in the statement. "The paltry sentencing is a slap in the face of suffering Bhopal victims."

Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide in 1999 and says all liabilities related to the accident were cleared in a 470-million-dollar out-of-court settlement with India's government in 1989.

In a statement Monday, the group said that "all the appropriate people from UCIL (Union Carbide India Limited) -- officers and those who actually ran the plant on a daily basis -- have appeared to face charges."